And All the Pretty Boys Die
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: You've survived, half-mad and utterly despised. You're losing yourself, but you just won't die. And Severus didn't die, but he didn't live either.


He stands alone a thick, dank taste in his mouth finally realizing - he is alone. They've gone - Marauders, the idiots of Harry's year, Lucius and Draco - _that one quiet Ravenclaw_. He doesn't feel old, just kind of cold _hiding in the shadows _cast by their brightness. And he'll never escape them now 'cause Potter died, empty little head filled with sloppily grafted memories. _Glassy green eyes _cold and hollow as an empty pensieve, and he'd known as he stared at it that he'd have to see them again. See them as he stares at the boy after slinking through the wailing hallways and the endless rooms carpeted with _corpses_. Screaming around his fist knowing it's _**impossible**_ to get them back, yet still he tries to scramble beyond the breachless walls of jade. Whimpering, once again reduced to pathetic _Snivillus_, the best and worse of him gone the way of this little fool's soul.

Still he is alive and all the tormentors are dead their victories best forgotten. Groping through room after room all but bawling over his friend and godson he makes his escape. Safe but for once frozen like _a skulking wolf _in the headlight gaze of Hagrid. He remembers a perfectly basis Hagrid letting Potter - _which one? _- off free. He watches the _half-breed _fall and remembers they were nearly friends. He thinks of Pettigrew, his own _eyes eerily phosphorus_, he breathes carefully. Blinking he runs away tenderly prodding the greater gaps in his memory - carefully piecing together a lattice of experience; a tapestry of facts. At the threstal clearing he finds the key and coin Albus left him. Grasping the coin tightly he intones, "Bounds".

They want his head or at least his body. He inwardly laughs at the threats they make knowing them to be gutless little sheep. Gathering news under the guise of unknown people he contemplates surrender, and then he remembers he's **alive**. Threading through a mass of humanity he plucks and gathers thinking of bottles upon bottles of polyjuice and thousands of little vials only some of which are _carefully labeled_. He thinks of the dusty cabinet and a beautiful script as delicate as the lies a twinkle hid. Vomiting in an alley he remembers the hat whispering to him one night as he refused to sleep. _"A hufflepuff through and through, just like Cornelius and Umbridge."_ He said something rude though he can't remember what. The framework of his mind corrupted, its complicated weave irreparably marred.

They finally release the deatheater's bodies creating a virtual parade of funerals. He cries at the one - can't remember which. He knows it didn't rain at the Malfoy's joint funeral. Can remember Narcissa's hair _a long straight shiny waterfall_. Didn't try to hide the tears no one seemed to notice, so it couldn't have been raining. He's outlived his generation and most of Harry's. White marble seems a common theme in the endless days - _pacing before the gaudy tome knowing he wasn't there for the manipulative old bastard's interment._ The tome at Godric is grander though he leaves no flowers; the fragile blossoms are clasped as tightly to his chest as his forgiveness. "Are you laughing Potter?" He cuts his hair into a _ragged mess of black _straw. He doesn't recognize his own face.

Victory is as hollow as the rooms he knocks about. Slowly unraveling he listens to the stereo and the phonograph as they compete to drown the voices in his sleep. _He listens to Lily chatter as he imagines he's being watched by the man on the bench._ There is a divergence of self and sense that makes his identity as meaningless as the scrawls crawling upon the robin egg blue walls, the skull white headboard. The too large bed floats in the endless quiet as he listens to the echoes of morbid fantasies. _Grunting Lily impales her sex on Potter's prick. _He has to get out of here.

Kissing her he wears the face of the boy who should have been her husband. Her eyes are amber this close up. Her hair remains as _willful as ever_. She knows this is a sick game, but she's willing to play. He studies her trying to gather her scent… Someone once told him _man's essence lies in his scent _or is scent. Laughter as he studies his carefully folded legs because he has no scent. Somehow he's lost it probably due to his constant changing. Without a scent is he anyone? Gathering the still lax body to himself he begins to pluck hairs. Idly he wonders what he really looks like anymore. Hours later the house is entirely empty.

In a café that could be a hundred others she draws. It's a skill she has learned during the long hours of train travel and flight. The pictures have no meaning except that which comes from excision. _Horses_ with the bodies of _Stepford wives_. A house as _crooked_ as a set of _yellow teeth_. An _old man _letting go of a _child_'s hand. A man sit across from her his eyes a steel gone brittle with rust. His remaining hair is more white then red. "Who are you?" She smiles teeth as straight and neat as medicine can make them. _Perfect_ly straight _hair_ and _hopeless_ly banal brown _eyes_. "I don't know Mr. Wesley." And the inflection isn't quite right.

He fucks her against the bathroom wall. It doesn't feel like anything. She knows Molly died _years ago _and _the twins _have long since been all they'll ever need again. Ron's _dead_, Ginny knows nothing. The feel of the _fiendfire_ sprouting from her wand brings her to the climax he couldn't. She lets the building burn down after she locks the door. She has no more strands of ginger hair. She drops in a hair more white then red. He walks through the doors with an insincere grin. The white walls are bright with the blood of _Unspeakables_.

He lingers in the bowls of history. The years have become meaningless and everyday he feels a little less scared. Everyday is a hundred years with each second a drop of self and sanity lost. He smiles as he sits on the hard bench hair _a perfect black_. BellaSirius Severus he isn't sure whose he wears doesn't care seeing them approach. Lily laughs as the awkward boy beside her grins uncertainly. Those _damnable black eyes _study him as the two walk by, "Oh Severus!" Smiling _behind his curtain of hair _he wonders if he should be frightened. Wonders as he fiddles with _the time turner _warm in his fingers. _Shrugging_ he dials it back _content_ to sit in the park watching himself go by. "Oh Severus!"


End file.
